I think the one on the right is the fastest for the 2.9 V MII's at 262 MHz. It should even work on a non-super7 board.

feipoa wrote:

I think the one on the right is the fastest for the 2.9 V MII's at 262 MHz. It should even work on a non-super7 board.

Mine doing well on Asus TXP4-X,which flashed into TX97-XE,anyway it's i430TX non SS7

I have a 486DLC/40MHZ with the matching co processor on an old M321 386 style board. Despite ISA bus, it is quite a bit quicker than my VLB 386DX/40 (also with copro) system.

I've had this system since the late 90s at least. It's currently (read: Always) in the state of being upgraded. Currently I blew the video card on it somehow and I am waiting on a 5 end SCSI cable so I can plug all my SCSI goodies into it.

You need to swap your DLC-40 into the VLB board. The 386DX-40 can't take advantage of VLB, but the Cyrix can.

I would like to. That board for some reason will not take ANY CPU that is not the 386 DX 40. Even the 486 DX 33 that it came with refuses to work anymore, and I did POST with it when I got the board a few years ago. Lately it's been hit or miss, and when removing the CMOS chip to reflow the board (It would only POST every 10th power up, now it works very well) I broke a leg and had to make one out of a resistor leg. I fear tampering with it - It was also warped when I took it out, but I laid it under some heavy things after heating it up and it seems to work well now.

I suppose I will attempt it once more, out of necessity - I have a whole bunch of cool SCSI parts (anyone remember the Syquest 88Mb "diskettes"?) that I cannot test due to the fact that my ATI card took a crap.

I seriously don't know what I did to that VLB board but it won't take anything other than specifically the AMD 386/40 - It's even picky on which one (two out of four I have work in it, the M321 takes them all) . I have another 486 VLB board in Poland, but I won't be able to get it here until July at the earliest - I will cross check all my remaining 486 CPUs on it and redouble my efforts.

Believe me, I want to get that EXP board working with the DLC!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGAdoMz1c0

Interesting youtube on the history of Cyrix posted today.

BSA Starfire wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGAdoMz1c0

Interesting youtube on the history of Cyrix posted today.

^^ That video made me sad. I thought the two Via Cyrix IIIs I have carried on the DNA of the mighty 6x86, instead I learn that they're stoopid IDT Winchips. Anyone have a nice MII on a Super 7 board with AGP that needs a good home? 😁

xjas wrote:

^^ That video made me sad. I thought the two Via Cyrix IIIs I have carried on the DNA of the mighty 6x86, instead I learn that they're stoopid IDT Winchips. Anyone have a nice MII on a Super 7 board with AGP that needs a good home? 😁

VIA did produce some Joshua chips before switching to Samuel. The former has a much larger gold top.

They're also basically unobtainium.

Do any of the CPU collectors have a working Joshua sample?
http://www.chipdb.org/img-cyrix-joshua-es-rev … -2.2.1-6015.htm

BSA Starfire wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWGAdoMz1c0

Interesting youtube on the history of Cyrix posted today.

Finally had time to watch this video. Very nice compilation. Looks like a few of my charts made it in.

I would have liked to see the TI 486SXL and TI486SXL2 mentioned in there with a discussion on the tension Cyrix had with Texas Instruments for producing this chip and why TI had to market them for OEM-only sales. As it was relayed to me, Cyrix was upset at TI for adding 8 KB cache (486SXL) to what was essentially a 486DLC chip (1 KB cache).

A mention of the rare Cyrix 5x86-133 would also be nice. In reference to the coming of Quake, FP_FAST really needs to be enabledincrease FPU performance and if you used a Voodoo 3D accelerator card, Quake will play surprisingly well on a Cx5x86. To put into perspective, a Cyrix 5x86-100 with a Matrox G200 accelerator card equates to a Pentium 90 without an accelerator card. Better yet is to use a Voodoo card, e.g. a Cyrix 5x86-133 with Voodoo card performs in Quake1 about the same as a AMD K6-3-600 without an accelerator card (tested at 640x480).

What surprised me were the Cyrix MediaGX "Workstations" in that PC World magazine article. I didn't know that the MediaGX's were integrated into standard desktop mini-towers like this. They refered to the Cyrix MediaGX as a Gx86, which I thought quite clever. That article claims that the Cyrix MediaGX at 120 MHz beats the Pentium 120. I wonder what test they based that off of. That outcome seems impossible to me. Also strange that there was a MediaGX 120 MHz. I always thought the slowest GX was 133 MHz. Saying a MediaGX 120 beats a Pentium 120 is like saying a Cyrix 5x86-120 beats a Pentium 120. Even looking at the integer results for a MediaGX 133 and a Pentium 133, my results show 41.1 vs. 61.5, respectively. Perhaps the writers of this article were able to find one benchmark which indicated otherwise.

My Quantum Bigfeet system 😀

Specs:
IBM 6x86MX PR200 (166 MHz)
PC Chips M537DMA33 skt7 motherboard w/ 512K L2 cache
16 MB EDO RAM
Cirrus Logic PCI 1MB Video
Trident 4DWAVE-DX sound
Quantum Bigfoot 1.2GB (master) & Quantum Bigfoot 8 GB (slave)
20x CD ROM + 1.44 MB 3.5" floppy
Running Win95c

I use it to play games sometimes. Thanks to the Bigfoot drives it's slow as molasses, but a nice conversation piece and a noise maker 🤣

Strange is, that you are gamers, and Cyrix was never good at games, more in office software.... so whats the point to appreciate now?

I use AMD cpus, but only those 486 100% clones. They are good 3,3V variants.

For retro build i need practicality, and Intel offerings are the most proctical and compatible.

^^ Not all of us are strictly gamers. I can appreciate the tech that went into these chips - and the fact that unlike AMD, Cyrix learned to do x86 the hard way (clean room) and did a commendable job. Their original FasMath 387 co-processors beat the pants off Intel's, the Cx5x86/120 is by far the fastest thing you can put on a 486-class board, and the original 6x86 lineup was no slouch either. Plus they broke outside the mould created by Intel way more than AMD did (486SLC, anyone?), and that makes them interesting.

They were perfectly usable chips back in the day, even when they lost the "bleeding edge" back to Intel they were still solid in the midrange segment that people actually bought. I had loads of good times gaming on my 5x86/100 desktop and 6x86/PR200+. And I still have the 5x86 Thinkpad I did my undergrad degree on.

I also root for the underdog. To me, the slower FPU of Cyrix chips is not so much of an issue when using the MII-400, as the FPU performance of this chip is similar to that of a P233MMX. The slower FPU is also less of an issue when you consider using 3D accelerator cards. It really boils down to personal preference and what you decide is the most demanding game you are comfortable playing on a given system. There will always be a limit, and when you've reached that limit, most people have an additional system which is faster and plays the more demanding games.

I really like how the products from Cyrix tended to be the fastest for various CPU upgrade paths, particularly with the FasMath, DRx2, SRx2, DLC, SXL2, and Cx5x86 product lines.

cj_reha wrote:

My Quantum Bigfeet system :) […]
Show full quote

My Quantum Bigfeet system 😀

Specs:
IBM 6x86MX PR200 (166 MHz)
PC Chips M537DMA33 skt7 motherboard w/ 512K L2 cache
16 MB EDO RAM
Cirrus Logic PCI 1MB Video
Trident 4DWAVE-DX sound
Quantum Bigfoot 1.2GB (master) & Quantum Bigfoot 8 GB (slave)
20x CD ROM + 1.44 MB 3.5" floppy
Running Win95c

I use it to play games sometimes. Thanks to the Bigfoot drives it's slow as molasses, but a nice conversation piece and a noise maker 🤣

Weren't the motherboards from PC Chips known to be terrible?

retrogamerguy1997 wrote:

Weren't the motherboards from PC Chips known to be terrible?

I don't know that they were all terrible.
Some 486 motherboards had fake cache
http://redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html

They were also thin as paper.

skitters wrote:

Some 486 motherboards had fake cache http://redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html

Wouldn't that be technically illegal due to misinforming customers (At least in the US)?

Also, going back to the main topic I think Cyrix was very good at making budget CPUs (later on ofc) to compete with i486s, Pentiums and K6s- In some cases, (like the Cx5x86-133 for Socket 3) they made the fastest processors for a certain socket. Later Cyrixes like the 6x86 and MII weren't as good as the competition especially in gaming but were good processors nonetheless.

F

harddrivespin wrote:

Wouldn't that be technically illegal due to misinforming customers (At least in the US)? […]
Show full quote

skitters wrote:

Some 486 motherboards had fake cache http://redhill.net.au/b/b-bad.html

Wouldn't that be technically illegal due to misinforming customers (At least in the US)?

Also, going back to the main topic I think Cyrix was very good at making budget CPUs (later on ofc) to compete with i486s, Pentiums and K6s- In some cases, (like the Cx5x86-133 for Socket 3) they made the fastest processors for a certain socket. Later Cyrixes like the 6x86 and MII weren't as good as the competition especially in gaming but were good processors nonetheless.

F

Didn't stop them from doing it, since they were being made in China anyway. Although after some major backlash they made some boards with real cache IIRC.